Is it just us, or is May vanishing more quickly than any month ought to?

We're hard at work finishing and polishing Divinity: Original Sin for full release but obviously haven't forgotten about our Early Access community and you our Kickstarter backers. It's been fun seeing what you've been getting up to via global chat, and you've helped us make a lot of fixes and improvements along the way. As ever, thank you for your enthusiastic support and invaluable feedback!

Today we have many interrelated and exciting updates that should significantly improve your Divinity: Original Sin experience. Check out the video below, or keep on reading to get the full scoop:

Mac <3 PC

First: Mac users, this one's for you! D:OS is now available for Mac systems through your Steam Early Access code.

Second: Mac players can play together with PC Players. And Steam Cloud saves are activated.

Taken together, these advancements mean you can play D:OS at home at your PC battle station, during your lunch break at work on your Mac, and on-the-go on your laptop of either make. And you can play it with anybody else who has a good taste in RPGs, whether they have a PC or a Mac.

The detailed minimum system specs are on the website, but the quick of it is that you need Mac OS X 10.8/10.9 with 4GB of memory and that the game already runs on Intel HD 3000 & 4000 graphics cards, though those should be considered minimum requirements.

The Collector's Edition: Loot, loot, loot!

The Collector's Edition (the same backers in the $95 tier will get) is currently in production and here's what you can expect:

The Collector's Edition includes:

Four Divinity titles (Two copies of D:OS on two DVDs; Divine Divinity and Beyond Divinity for download)

Zandalor's trunks & the Golden Grail DLC

Maradino's Alchemical Cards for in-game crafting

Cloth map of Andavale

Collector's Edition Stickers

Two-sided Poster

Collector's Edition Soundtrack on CD-ROM

Game Manual

Zandalor's Deck of Playing Cards

Bellegar's RPG dice

How do I get my hands on one of these?

The English edition is available worldwide exclusively through the Larian Vault.

IMPORTANT! There are only 1500 English versions of the Collector's Edition available; the rest is reserved for our Kickstarter backers. We aren't planning a re-print (the organisational acumen it takes confuses and frightens we developer-types), so get your loot while it's available.

A limited set of German, French & Polish editions will be available via retail.

In the Benelux, a limited amount of English editions can be found in Game Mania

No other editions are planned

A Massive Early Access Update is live!

Polish is the name of the game, and D:OS is creeping ever-closer to being ready for launch.

We've implemented lots of updates this time around, including totally revamped enemy encounters, art and animation improvements, dialog changes, improved skills and spells, inventory-sorting, and much more. Download the update, check it out, and (let us know what you think!)

The full change list is still being typed up at the time of this writing, but here's a short summary for you:

Mac & PC players can now play together.

New 'Laptop Optimized' mode will keep your game running smoothly, whether you're travelling by air, sky, or sea.Touchpad control support is also added.

Steam Cloud saves are active, so you can continue playing your savegames from several devices.

The AI now adapts its tactics to players and the environment, and it can also make use of potions and special arrows.

The treasure generation has been completely revamped.

Pouches allow you to easily organize items in your inventory.

The skill & spell abilities have been revised to better support classless character builds.

Skills and spells can now be “unlearned" and also have requirements.

10 extra talents have been added. Talents now also have requirements.

New skill effects have been added. Go on, summon a spider!

Several quality-of-life improvements including inventory sorting, context-sensitive item menus, a dialog log, action-point usage previews, the ability to use objects from another character’s inventory and more.

Numerous bug fixes and balancing changes.

We need beta testers!

We've had a secret army of testers combing through the game for us these last months, but we're in need of fresh eyes and fresh perspectives. If you know you've got an upcoming weekday off and are in the vicinity of Gent, Belgium, we'd love to hear from you.

We are looking for two types of testers to join us between now and release.

The Rookies. Testers who have never played D:OS in any form before. We need fresh eyes to help us see where the game can be made more intuitive to new players and to improve our current tutorial.

The Veterans. Testers who have completed all or most of the beta content and are ready to delve into our other, never-before-released mid- and end-game content.

Testers must be available to join us at our office in Gent, Belgium for a day of testing.
Send inquiries to playtesting@larian.com.

In closing

We still need to fulfill some of the Kickstarter rewards and we wanted to let you know that we haven't forgotten. This week for instance the RPGWatch & RPGCodex quest was finalised and we'll soon have news for the people who have rewards like design your henchmen.

I've complimented you folks at Larian, before, about the quality of your Kickstarter campaign, but I'm going to do it, again. This Kickstarter, its updates, and all of the events connected with it have been absolutely superb. I have never seen a Kickstarter as good as this one, and I suspect I never shall. Frankly, I cannot imagine how any gamer could visit this Kickstarter or view its video and video updates online without getting excited for this game. This has been the kind of campaign that is used in Business Administration schools to teach marketing, and I have thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it, from beginning to end. I only regret the day when it will all end and I will no longer be able to look forward to more updates with the happy, theme music that brightens my day.

So please name the OS (see the above article) if you wanna talk about compatiblity.

But honestly i would be disapointed if both (btw what about linux) can't work together.
1.) You use your own protocol on top of tcp/ip
2.) You use .net (eg mono) which as long as you use classes included in both implementations you should be fine.

So if it wouldn't be crossplatform you should realy have a good explination for that, since you know long enough you wanna support more than 1 OS.
And TCP/IP is the same on all Plattforms , isn't it ?

Last a question what is the status of the linux build and i mean a official statement and a official roadmap for it? I mean sorry to be honest but if i get the linux version when all off my friends moved on ... lets say it doesn't make much sense in coop game (insert rant here ...)

I know that, that's why i played with my wife (she just knew Sacred2 - but i done all the baldur's gate.) and tryed to learn her game's mechanism.

We played on normal, but she died 2 times in 10minutes. So ok game is hard no problem, but maybe devs could add a PNJ at the beggining of the game, where we can buy potions or resurectiob spells... I don't know, but now what ? She's dead, what should i do ? Play alone to the end with only 1 character ?

@ascrounch
To be fair, the game's not for everyone. This isn't Skyrim (which I do enjoy, by the way), where it's easy to win. It's a throwback to the hardcore RPG's of old. It's supposed to be difficult. You're not supposed to be able to kill everything you come across when you're just starting out.

@LordCrash the misuse is recent though, started when mobile games became a thing (before that it was "Windows PC compatible" iirc). In all fairness, most people won't have seen a "real" (eg. non embedded system, so no consoles/phones etc.) non-PC computer in their life, and probably never will.

Still I'll fight for terminology being used correctly, I've already spent a day working during a weekend very recently because someone took a shortcut with terminology... (and got it wrong) And especially in this case nobody is going to be confused if they actually use the correct terms... ;)

The game isn't really all that hard. But it's also no casual game. The game was for many "regular" players of such games way too easy in the latest beta build tbh. Larian increased enemy AI and improved their combat behaviour to offer more challenge.
If you think that the game is too hard play in easy mode, try to avoid combat against enemies with a higher level than you and save your game often and regularly to be able to try again without being forced to replay a lot of stuff.

The focus of the co-op experience is "hop-on, hop-off" which means that you can join the game of another person without the need to play the whole game with him/her. I don't like that that much myself but that's the focus.

I really like you Larian guys, but could you please please please stop spreading misinformation. You have a Windows, Mac and Linux version and all three are "PC" (unless you support PowerPC Macs and the Linux versions can run on weird hardware, like that UltraSPARC I still have standing around).

2) How many copies of Original Sin are included in this version? 1 on disk and 1 digital? Are they both steam versions or drm free? Do I get to choose steam or gog for digital version? One last thing, let's say I start playing gog version, will I be able to play online co-op with a friend who is running the steam version?
Thanks in advance!! Never lose your creativity, cheers!

Sami: They mentioned in previous update (#59) Linux will come after release, so it's being worked on. I understand your eagerness though ;) I also use nothing but Linux (also from Gent, Belgium). I hope Mac/Linux people will get DC one day too, but hey, small steps... I'm waiting patiently!

"I'm unsure as to whether or not the Kickstarter physical tier ($95 pledge) will include the same contents as the Collector's Edition unveiled in Swen's update today. Swen had mentioned that a number of CE copies were going to Kickstarter supporters but since the name and the contents listed in the Kickstarter aren't identical, I'm not sure if it's because the Kickstarter was done earlier and the contents have only now been finalized, or if the CE is something different than the Physical Tier. Any clarification would be appreciated."

Swen:

"The CE box is the 95$ box which we'll be sending out to backers but they'll also get a few extras on top (on top of actually the extra's that are already in the CE box). Specifically the art book and things like the Kickstarter potions."

@Olauron: as much as I see the physical artbook is no part of this box, but an extra in the tier $95 and above. This update is about the $65 box, isn't it?
However it's a bit confusing, because in the 95 tear they list the map and soundtrack cd as extra, but they are in this box...

A bit confused here. Let's say one has pledged at the 150 tier... he does receive all the goodies in that image? Box is white or blue (blue seems bigger)? Does the same tier receive these new downloadable copies which are not mentioned in original rewards, along with DD and BD too?

Regarding beta testing I just thought that we could go and test a bit. My girlfriend is almost an RPG-virgin, she only played DD and BD so far, and she never played D:OS. She may have some valuable opinion from outa there. Hmm, only the timing is a bit bad, but we'll see... :-)